I’ve just had yet another battle with the organisational structure of this site. It seems there is a cost to enjoying the categorisation benefits of using blog software – how does one construct useful categories?

I have tried to use subcategories to make the list clearer, but such a solution has simply not been able to handle the breadth of diverse situations thrown at it. What if a post fits in both the “Photography” and “Free as in Speech” categories, but the former is a sub of “Projects” while the later is a mother-category for a different set?

So now I am trying a more powerful, albeit slightly less neat, approach. Every category is on an even playing field. Complicated posts can be put in any number of categories, and all combinations are possible and reasonable. The hierarchy has died, and a new era of category democracy has arrived.

2 Responses to “The trouble with hierarchical categories”

[…] to construct this website, it had “categories” and not “tags”. Since then, I have tried to improve my use of categories and tags have come along to add another complication to the fray. I have now finally reached a […]